Board of Directors

Cornelia Sargent – Chair

Cornelia Sargent is active in numerous activities throughout New England. She currently serves as a mediator on the NH AMP roster, and has mediated small claims cases for eight years, primarily in Claremont and Newport NH district courts.

She received her B.A. from Smith College and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law prior to completing 500 hours of mediation training at Woodbury College.

Curt Goering

Curt Goering is the executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture where he oversees an international staff with offices in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Washington D.C. as well as healing projects in Africa and the Middle East. CVT provides comprehensive care for victims of government-sponsored torture, conducts research and training, and undertakes policy efforts to commit the U.S. and other institutions to work against torture and aid torture survivors.

Mr. Goering began at CVT in May 2012. Prior to that, he was the Chief Operating Officer at Amnesty International USA, where he had worked for nearly 30 years. As COO, he managed the largest branch of the organization, and his tenure saw significant expansion in revenues, advocacy programs and membership. In addition to directing the day to day operations, he was involved in strategy development, public policy and planning, financial oversight and external relations. He chaired a global policy team based on five continents, leading to new research and advocacy policies. His experience gave him deep knowledge of international human rights and humanitarian issues.

Over his professional career, Goering led a dozen Amnesty International missions including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Mongolia, Taiwan, Turkey, and Tanzania. In addition to his positions with Amnesty as a researcher, advocacy director for Europe and the Middle East, Senior Deputy Executive Director and COO, he served as an interim Head of the Gaza office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2009 and 2010.

Elizabeth Defeis

Elizabeth Defeis is professor of International Law, International Human Rights, International Criminal Law, European Union Law and United States Constitutional Law at Seton Hall University. Professor Defeis has written extensively in the areas of International Law, Human Rights, Gender Equality, European Union Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. She is the Producer/Host of television programs including the 15 part video course on Women and the Law, Human Rights and New Jersey, the 3 part series The Italians and the Creating of America and the 10 part International Law Television Course which has been translated into Chinese, Spanish and Russian and is in distribution in more than 25 countries.

Mary E. King

Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies for the UN-affiliated University for Peace; Distinguished Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, Britain; and Scholar-in-Residence, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC.

King won a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award for Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, about her work — at times alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) — in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. This four-year immersion was to define her life. It also was the source for “Sex and Caste,” co-authored with Casey Hayden, a 1966 article viewed by historians as tinder for second-wave feminism.

King’s other books include The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in Eastern Europe (2009), A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (2007), and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action (1999, 2002). Forthcoming is a work supported by the United States Institute of Peace, to be a case study of modern India’s first important social struggle, a 1920s nonviolent campaign against untouchability in Kerala.

A presidential appointee in the Carter administration, King had worldwide oversight for the Peace Corps and other national U.S. volunteer service corps programs.

In 2011, King’s alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, awarded her a doctor of laws (honorary) degree, and she received a James M. Lawson Award for Nonviolent Achievement. Her doctorate in international politics is from Aberystwyth University, in Wales, UK, which, in 2011, also made her a Fellow, its equivalent of the honorary degrees bestowed elsewhere. King received the 2009 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize. In 2003, in Mumbai, she was awarded the Jamnalal Bajaj International Prize, named for Gandhi’s silent financial backer.